A UC Berkeley student team has taken second place in the Environmental Protection Agency’s fourth annual Campus RainWorks Challenge (in the demonstration-project category). The design competition challenges college students to develop plans to reduce stormwater pollution and build resilience to climate change.

The Berkeley team chose a 1.75-acre site known as Wickson Meadow, on the north fork of Strawberry Creek, where the campus’s first botanical garden was once located. The area, just north of Valley Life Sciences Building, contains many exotic plant species and poorly designed culverts and retaining walls along the creek.

Students from the College of Environmental Design and the College of Natural Resources designed “Unbound,” a plan to help reduce flooding and restore the ecological diversity of the area.